HNY

All Images: West Leicester, December 2019

Let's not mince words: 2019's been a right fucker - has it not?  Certainly, many must still feel pretty beaten up by recent political events in Britain (as elsewhere).  And that's before one notices that, beyond the self-reflexive borders of this absurdist, close-to-rogue state - the rest of the planet appears to be increasingly on fire.  Here, of course (just to be characteristically perverse), it seems to have hardly stopped raining since October.  It's difficult to know exactly where anyone with even a modicum of intelligence, integrity or survival instinct, might go from here, in 2020.

But go on - I guess we must (or at least - try to).  And perhaps it's still a little too early for complete despair.  Almost terminally deluded and self-sabotaging, though the British body politic may now seem, we must reluctantly admit that many others have a much worse time of it.  I still have a roof over my head, and (for now) more than enough to eat.  Democracy may be on its arse, but until that eventual knock on the door at 3.00 am, I might even still lay claim to some vestigial freedom of speech - I suppose.  Perhaps there's relatively little any of us can really do to reverse the climate change juggernaut, but here, the saturated, leaden clouds have now parted long enough to admit a little pale sunshine, for three days in a row.

As these images might just illustrate, occasional glimmers of hope may still be observable -  even in the least likely situations.

Happy New Year.